Ballerina Dancing After Dreams

Dancing in Dreams

Soft, slow taps on piano keys fall from the cold, shadowed sky. The street outside is quiet and hardly stirred by the lullaby of the soft, nurturing melody holding her. The city is still and its silence is the music of moment she breathes. The spotlight of the stage is my only visibility of her. It follows her with the presence of a thousand eyes from the captivated crowd. The pianist holds ivory key and the ballerina holds her arabesque leaving her body suspended in the sky. The rhythm of the music stimulates her, rolling her body into flexible, intricate, gentle pirouettes. The high note tingles to life as she quadruple twirls on the tip of her toes, her translucent body spinning beautifully. The music slows into neutral tranquility and she holds herself steadily in still anticipation. In the silence the rhythm lives in the graceful, dainty movements of her hands and arms like flowers blowing in a breeze. She walks carefully on pencil toes; tall, straight and proud preparing for the next stroke of music. The pianist breathes the melody to life again and she takes to flight. In the final moments of the music she dances gently with powerless passion. Her weightless body is stretching and flexing into intricate threads of pure, elegant movements. Like a feather in the wind she effortlessly lifts herself into the air into a perfectly elevated slit leap landing gracefully in a plie. The music slowly trails away and her artistic line slowly dwindles to rest. When music is over, the ballerina is still and silent as the night. As the curtain falls, the city falls into darkness, and wakes to the cheering of the enlightened audience.

Poem by Alina Shirley